Opinion | Danny Cevallos: The many obstacles in the way of criminal charges for Gov. Cuomo. - NBCNewsTHINK
On Friday afternoon, Cuomo’s lawyers held a news conference showing part of the reason why local prosecutors should not make charging decisions based on the report alone. Cuomo’s counsel made a presentation criticizing the state attorney general’s report and effectively driving home an important maxim in criminal law: The report is only one side of the story.
Cuomo’s attorneys gave would-be prosecutors a sneak preview of what a defense would look like should criminal charges be brought, and it wasn’t just a flat, boilerplate denial. They brought their own evidence, which included e-mails, alternate timelines and their own potential witnesses. They complained that some of the exculpatory evidence was ignored by the AG’s investigators. Some of what they presented, if true, could cast doubt on the witness accounts in the report.
Cuomo just sent a powerful message: If prosecutors base criminal charges on the AG report alone, without doing their own investigation, they do so at their own political peril. And if local prosecutors think the doubt that Cuomo’s attorneys cast on the witness accounts is reasonable, then they’re going to think twice before taking on the governor and his very able counsel.
After all, district attorneys who decide to charge a sitting governor risk political suicide if they fail. They may decide it’s safer for them to announce they will do their due diligence, carry out a thorough investigation, run out the clock and hope this all fades away. It probably won’t.shortly after Cuomo’s attorneys’ news conference, declaring that a rolling production of interview transcripts would be made available to the State Assembly, though they will be “redacted as needed.
On the other hand, the AG’s office characterized the Cuomo team as “attack[ing] this investigation and attempt[ing] to undermine and politicize this process,” which it said “takes away from the bravery displayed by these women.” That part is not accurate. Cuomo’s attorneys’ investigation of these allegations does not diminish the bravery of these women at all. It is just testing the veracity of their stories; presumably the AG’s investigators did the same thing.
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